Memories of Angela Smith

She had a spark that was infectious

Andrew

When I met Angela I was first attracted to her open, lively, and attractive personality. As I got to know her more I learned just how gifted she was at making others feel happy, comfortable, needed, and loved. That’s just the way she was. She wanted others to feel good and to be comfortable, and she gave herself to that end. She seemed to know what people needed, often almost before they knew themselves. She was that perceptive and sensitive to others.

We traveled together for a number of years and it was during that time that I also saw how much she loved to meet people, to talk with them, and to tell them about the Lord and His love for them. She had a joyful delight in the Lord and a spark about it that was infectious. She also picked up languages very quickly and was fluent in a few. I can't think of anywhere we went together that she wasn’t able to meet and talk with someone—and even if she didn't know their language she just got right in there with them and tried to communicate anyway.

A few years ago, 1999, we visited China together. I had arranged with three of my children, then in their late teens and whom I hadn’t seen for a few years, for Angela and me to meet them in Bangkok, Thailand, where they were living at the time. The plan was for the five of us to travel together from Bangkok to different parts of China. It was meant to be not only a special reunion with my son and two of my daughters, but as well an experience, an education, and a special time for us all.

Our biggest hurdle was to raise the funds we needed to get the two of us from Dallas to Bangkok and back, and then to get the five of us from Bangkok to Kunming, which was our first stop and “base” in southern China, and then around to a number of other cities and places within China, before returning to Bangkok. We knew the plan was the Lord's will—He had clearly confirmed it to us through a number of prophecies—but we realized that it was going to take quite an exercising of our faith before it’d come about.

I was very much looking forward to traveling together with my kids. Angela knew it was my heart’s desire that it’d happen and it was Angela who was key to making it possible through the people she met and the friends she made. Her faith made the trip possible. Most of my days were busy with the work that I needed to do; while working with Angela towards our goal in my free time and on weekends.

The Lord told us at one point that we were going to have to meet and minister to a lot of people for this to happen, but that was one of the things that Angela loved most—meeting people and witnessing to them of her love for the Lord.

She put together newsletters, sent out appeals, and spent every spare minute she could witnessing or ministering to someone. And over time—it took a little more than a year—everything for the trip came together.

And it was a wonderful time for us all, a highlight of my life that I'll never forget, thanks to Angela. But more than that, the trip was a fulfillment of Angela’s faith and of what the Lord had told us. And the souls saved as a result will live on through eternity and the friendships made endure to this day—thanks to Angela’s love and desire for others to meet the One she loved more than life.